“Sicario” ratchets into a series of boiling
encounters when when Arizona FBI agent and kidnap-response-team leader Kate
Macer (Blunt) uncovers a Mexican cartel’s house of death, her shocking find
leads to profound consequences on both a personal and global level. Kate is
recruited to join a covert black-ops mission headed by a mysterious Colombian
operative known only as Alejandro (Del Toro) along with special agent Matt
Graver (Brolin) Even as Kate tries to convince herself she’s on a hunt for
justice, she is thrust into the dark heart of a secret battleground that has
swept up ruthless cartels, kill-crazy assassins, clandestine American spies and
thousands of innocents.

“It’s a movie about choices,” adds Benicio Del Toro,
who dives into one of his most conflicted roles as the equal parts vengeful and
tender hit man Alejandro. “It’s tough to
say whether any character in Sicario is truly good or bad. Do the means justify the ends? What happens when go into a situation where
you want to kill one guy and you kill 20 innocent people? You got the bad guy,
but at what cost?”

“Kate is
tempted by this world,” says Emily Blunt, who breaks the mold with her portrait
of a fierce female character whose life is in jeopardy throughout every second
of the film. “She realizes she was
barely scratching the surface doing things by the book and now she wants to
believe she can do something that will make a real difference. Yet the very idea of no longer following the
rules turns Kate’s whole world upside down.
Nothing makes sense anymore.”

Josh Brolin, who is known for characters who ply the
edges, was intrigued by the movie’s subtext of big questions about values
versus security and whether fighting criminals with outlaw behavior darkens
hearts beyond repair. “This movie is a
human mystery that you get to grab at and put together for yourself,” Brolin
says. “It’s a suspenseful and emotional
puzzle.”

For screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, slowly, a story
began to emerge about a side of the war on drugs few ever have seen in the U.S.
-- the story of a war on drugs that often, in practical terms, becomes a war
for drugs, as the powers that be jockey for control of the trade. It was, by necessity, a story full of human
ambiguity. “Crime stories are usually
told either from the point of view of the hero or the villain,” Sheridan notes. “This story couldn’t be like that. This is a story in which, even when you
think the villain has been caught, you realize the problem hasn’t really been
resolved. There will be another villain tomorrow.”

Sheridan’s script immediately garnered praise for its
blend of a breathless thriller pace with the poignant characters of a
sophisticated drama. But at first, he encountered resistance to the obvious
risks of making the film. Then he met
Thunder Road founder Basil Iwanyk and senior vice president of features Erica
Lee.

Iwanyk says the screenplay was just too powerful to ignore;
it was tense and timely, it was mesmerizing in its emotional sweep. “We thought
it was one of the most beautifully, intensely, emotionally written thrillers
that we’ve read in a really long time,” he comments.

Villeneuve felt an instant affinity for the material,
but his aim was to leave judgment out of it, allowing the audience to decide
whether the methods used by the blacks-op team are worth it in the end. “I have always thought that the world is
gray, not black-and-white, and that the notion of good and evil is oriented by
one’s cultural and geopolitical background,” the director comments. “Is there a solution to the continuing growth
of the drug trade? Sicario raises a lot
of questions, but it leaves the answers open.”

High-intensity action explodes in “Sicario” – now in
ciemas nationwide from Pioneer Films.